Events

Join us in person at Knox Presbyterian Church (Lisgar & Elgin) in Geneva Hall.  Please use the Garden Entrance on Elgin Street. Limited free street parking is available on Saturdays, and the City Hall Parking Garage is available for $2.00.

To join online, register here.

Annual Holiday Social: “Show & Tell” theme / 9 a.m. EST

We will begin the day with our annual Holiday Social, a time for conversation and exchanges of information with our fellow genealogists. This is the first time we have been able to enjoy our Social in person since 2019 and so we are looking forward to this with excitement. Our time together will include a Family Holiday Show & Tell. Do you have a holiday story to share? Perhaps you have an ornament, tradition, or holiday heirloom that has been passed down to you from one of your ancestors.  Or, have you found a way to gift your family history stories to others?  This will be an open forum session with opportunities for people both in the room and online to participate, and, of course, there will be Christmas treats to share. 

Great Moments in Genealogy / 10 a.m. EST

Join us in person at Knox Presbyterian Church (Lisgar & Elgin) in Geneva Hall.  Please use the Garden Entrance on Elgin Street. Limited free street parking is available on Saturdays, and the City Hall Parking Garage is available for $2.00.

To join online, please register  here.

Presenters: John McConkey, Duncan Monkhouse, Marianne Rasmus 

Using tools and luck on a brick wall / Malcolm Thurgur (cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances)

Maggie McConkey - what became of you?

Born in 1883, Maggie was the illegitimate daughter of John McConkey's great-granduncle, George. As a young child she lived with her mother and later her step-father in London, England. George had returned to his birthplace in Ireland. The 1911 census, however, shows Maggie living with George in Bangor, Co Down. She is still there when he dies in 1917 and she is the main beneficiary of his estate. But then the trail goes cold. Did she return to England or remain in Ireland? Did she ever re-establish contact with her mother? Did she marry and have children? John describes how this intriguing puzzle was solved.

John McConkey has roots in Northern Ireland but was born in England. He and his wife emigrated to Canada in 1971 and for the past 40 years have lived in Ottawa. John was a 17-year employee of Nortel Networks. He has been a member of BIFHSGO since 2006 and served two years as BIFHSGO's Director of Research and Projects.

The Wright Way

Upon starting family history, there are always brick walls. One of Duncan’s, which he inherited from his mother, was John Charles Wright. Duncan will explain what the brick wall was and how it finally was broken down.

Duncan Monkhouse was a long-time investigator for the federal government. This interest in prying into others' lives led to an interest in genealogy and searching for record gems in many different archives. Duncan has also served BIFHSGO as president and Co-Chair Program for the annual conference.

Ella’s Story, The Final Piece: Time and Place

This installment of Ella’s Story will follow up on a presentation Marianne gave in May 2019 about the discovery of the birth mother of Ella Moreland Kerr Rasmus, a  Scottish war bride and the paternal grandmother of Marianne’s husband, Bill. In this presentation, Marianne will describe how COVID, the DNA tool WATO (What are the Odds), and the concepts of time and place helped to identify Ella’s biological father and, despite several unexpected twists, unlocked the obstacles to discovering the final branch of Ella’s family tree.

Marianne Rasmus began her family history research in 2008 when looking forward to the arrival of her first grandchild. What she thought might be a two-week dabble has turned into a 14-year adventure. Motivated by her love of history, Marianne is passionate about understanding the place of both her and her husband Bill’s ancestors in that history, and in finding compelling ways to tell their stories. Marianne joined BIFHSGO in 2014, after moving to Ottawa from Vancouver in 2013. She has served on the Conference Planning Committee, and on the Board, first as Treasurer and currently as BIFHSGO’s Program Director.

Meeting will be online only. To join online, please register here.

ScotlandsPlaces for Family Historians / 9 a.m. EST

Presenter:  Robert Urquhart

The ScotlandsPlaces website (www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk) is a resource well-used by local historians in Scotland, but it is also a very useful site for family historians with Scottish ancestry. It combines data and historical records from three national institutions in Scotland: National Records of Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. As well as providing some key information on specific places and administrative units (like parishes, counties and burghs), it allows free access to 17th and 18th century tax rolls. This presentation will give some practical examples of how genealogists can get the best out of the site.

Robert Urquhart is a native of the Kingdom of Fife and worked as an archivist in local archives in the west of Scotland for 13 years before moving to the National Archives of Scotland in 1999, where he worked primarily on online access to archives. He was part of the project team which created the ScotlandsPlaces website, as well as providing content for the ScotlandsPeople, Scottish Archive Network and Scottish Handwriting sites. He was latterly Head of Digitisation at National Records of Scotland and now runs a palaeography transcription and teaching business (www.abbotshall.net). His research interests include early modern Scottish-Dutch connections and Scottish parish boundary revisions in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Untangling "Family Thickets": Cornwall to Canada / 10 a.m. EST

Presenter: Wesley Johnston

Families can be like thickets, full of intermarriages over multiple generations. The multiple connections made for a very complex familial landscape, just as real to our ancestors as the terrain where they lived. Putting the families of a locality back together yields deep insight into their lives and the choices they made, but doing it successfully requires a solid research method. This presentation looks at three related case studies of family thickets: St. Blazey in Cornwall, Columbus in Ontario, and the voyages that connected them. Wesley will show how their interconnected family histories can be reconstructed into databases, web pages and analytical presentations.

Wesley Johnston began family history in 1954 at age 7, when his father died and Wesley inherited the Johnston Family Bible, begun in 1861 in Pickering Township, Canada West. He has researched on-site in many countries and worked with many languages. He is the author of 27 books on family, art and WW II history. Wesley is the historian and webmaster of the US 7th Armored Division Association and founding president of the American WWII Association Historians Consortium. His books are available on Amazon and his website is http://www.wwjohnston.net.

Meeting will be online only. To join online, register here.

Census Records in the Virtual Treasury of Ireland / 9 a.m.

Presenter: Dr Brian Gurrin

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland was launched in June 2022, on the centenary of the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland at the Four Courts in 1922. The Virtual Treasury brings together tens of thousands of copy records and transcripts to replace, as far as possible, the vast collection destroyed in that opening engagement of the Irish Civil War a century ago. Funded by the Department of Culture as part of the Decade of Centenaries, this is a free, public online resource that will continue to grow. With millions of words of searchable text, it is an exciting new resource available to anyone interested in Irish history.

In his talk Dr Brian Gurrin will begin by telling the story of the lost Public Record Office and explaining how the team of historians, archivists and computer scientists collaborated to virtually recreate many of its missing collections. He will then talk about the census resources available in the Virtual Treasury.

Dr Brian Gurrin is the census specialist on the Beyond 2022 project. Brian is primarily interested in researching Ireland’s demographic history before the Great Famine, and is particularly focused on researching religious demography between the 17th and 19th centuries. He has researched the 1766 Religious Census of Ireland for many years and authored, with professors Kerby Miller and Liam Kennedy, The Irish Religious Censuses of the 1760s, published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 2022. Brian was responsible for one of three Gold Seams (components) during the Beyond 2022 project – The 1766 Religious Census Gold Seam. His most satisfying work during the project involved the reconstruction of the entire hierarchy of census returns from the 1766 census.

Lust, Lucre and Lybell: An 18th Century Soap Opera / 10 a.m. EST

Presenter: Dianne Brydon

Adultery, divorce, yelling and cursing in the street, challenges over inheritance. In plotlines that could be taken from the modern series Dallas, this 18th century soap opera features the Guild family of Tranent, Scotland.  For over a decade, between 1788 and 1798, Tranent citizens not only witnessed the family drama, they at times actively participated and told their story for the record.  Dianne Brydon will recount the saga, gleaned by interweaving details from church, estate, property and court records.

Dianne Brydon has been researching her Guild family story for five years, whenever she can get to Scotland, where she has sneezed through many dusty bundles of legal documents to piece together their colourful story. 

With her father, in 2017 Dianne published their family history The Stalwart Brydons: From Scotland to Galt to Portage La Prairie.  She has written two articles for BIFHSGO’s Anglo-Celtic Roots, most recently “Who’s Crazy? The Tale of Mary Brydon and Mental Health in 19th Century Ontario,” which also won honourable mention in BIFHSGO’s 25th Anniversary writing competition.  Her talk “A Genteel Woman in Need:  The Story of Maud Lampman, the First Woman Appointed to Work on Parliament Hill” won the Best BIFHSGO Talk by a Member award in 2020.  She is currently BIFHSGO’s President and previously served as Program Director from 2019 to 2021.

Join us in person at Knox Presbyterian Church (Lisgar & Elgin) in Geneva Hall.  Please use the Garden Entrance on Elgin Street. Limited free street parking is available on Saturdays, and the City Hall Parking Garage is available for $2.00.

To join online, register here.

Tips For Genetic Genealogy DNA Research / 9 a.m. EST

Presenter: Shirley Marshall Monkhouse

This presentation will provide ten top tips and a method to organize your genetic genealogy DNA research. By working your way through the tips and process, you will reduce time and effort in future analysis and have a better understanding for your family history research and your DNA results. This is an updated and revised version of a presentation given in 2017. There will also be information for those with Irish DNA and a detailed handout provided. This talk will be a benefit to everyone doing family history research as well as those with DNA results.

There was a shot; after that everything is confusing / 10 a.m.

Presenter: Shirley Marshall Monkhouse

Just a short walk outside a small town on the border of Co. Wexford and Co. Carlow in Ireland, near the shore of the lovely Slanny River, on a market day 18 June 1831, a musket shot was heard. After that everything is confusing. This event is referred to as “The Battle of the Pound.'' After I first learned about the “Newtown Barry Affray '' in 2016, it has taken time to untangle the story and to understand the complex back history and the long-lasting outcome. When I used the genealogical concept of “Context” research the story became more clear and easier to understand, as part of Irish history and family research.

Since a family reunion in 1967, Canada’s Centennial year, Shirley Marshall Monkhouse has been interested in learning about all her Irish ancestors. She grew up listening to her father explain family trees to visitors in the farmhouse built by her great-grandfather near Carp Ontario, and located within 50 km of all of her pioneer ancestors' farms in the Ottawa Valley. All thirty-two of the 3rd great-grandparents were “Born in Ireland,” paternal from Leinster in the Republic of Ireland and maternal from Ulster of Northern Ireland. Shirley took her first of many DNA tests in 2015, manages DNA kits for others, and is a project manager for the Rothwell & Rathwell Surname Project at FamilyTreeDNA. She has taken week-long courses and online studies in genetic genealogy and has given presentations to the BIFHSGO  DNA Special Interest Group. 

Shirley and her husband, Duncan, are both working on extending their family trees, and have travelled to do research at repositories and visit homelands in both England and Ireland.

Ulster Historical Foundation Day

25 March 2023

With Fintan Mullan & Co.

Details to follow

Join us in person at Knox Presbyterian Church (Lisgar & Elgin) in Geneva Hall.  Please use the Garden Entrance on Elgin Street. Limited free street parking is available on Saturdays, and the City Hall Parking Garage is available for $2.00.

To join online, please register here.

Practical Tips for Repair and Care of Family Treasures / 9 a.m. EDT

Presenter: Kyla Ubbink 

Pick up some handy and practical methods that ensure the longevity of your family collections. A brief review of archival enclosure and housing options provides a guideline for storage; while methods for basic cleaning, deacidification, and dealing with mould and musty odours present some of the tools needed for artifact care. Whether your collections consist of documents, photographs, artwork, or heirlooms, applying archival principles in your home safeguards their preservation for future generations.

Operating a private conservation studio since 2002, Kyla Ubbink began her career through an internship with the Library and Archives Canada’s conservation laboratories in 2000 and subsequent contract positions through to 2005. Her private practice, Ubbink Book & Paper Conservation, provides professional conservation, restoration and preservation consultation services to institutions, galleries, antiquities dealers, collectors, researchers and genealogists. As an advocate for her field, Mrs. Ubbink taught Cultural Preservation for Algonquin College’s Archives and Records Management Program, has several publications in professional periodicals, is a regular presenter at conferences, and provides workshops and lectures for community groups and heritage professionals. Mrs. Ubbink served on a Canadian Standards Review Board to assess and update the standard for “Permanence of Paper for Records, Books and Other Documents,” and fulfilled the role of treasurer and secretary for the Canadian Association for Conservation of Cultural Property’s Board of Directors. www.bookandpaperonservation.com

The Sad Story of the Mitchells in Westminster / 10 a.m. EDT

Presenter: Jill Thompson

One of Jill’s ancestors, William Mitchell, had moved into London from the west of England, part of a large migration influenced by the decline of agriculture in the early 1800’s. He applied his trade as a boot maker, in central London, living and working in an affluent area of the West End. His decline and the treatment of his children were a reflection of the hard times in London in that era.

Jill Thompson was born in the basement of University College Hospital, London, during WW2. Her mother was born in the same location, during WW1; both were surrounded by sandbags! Jill was raised in London and obtained a BSc degree at Reading University. In Canada, she graduated with an MSc in Extension Education. Jill's paternal grandmother, Gran Sellwood, was the only person in her family to show any interest in their family history. She shared stories about the railway (a major employer for the men on both sides of Jill’s family), the suffragettes and working at the Crosse & Blackwells pickle factory in Soho Square, Oxford Street, London.

Serious family history research commenced after her family visited Salt Lake City en route to Ottawa from Vancouver. Jill started her search in the "rooms" at the back of the LDS church on Prince of Wales Drive, Ottawa. Here much help was provided by the regular volunteers. This was prior to BIFHSGO and the gradual opening up of so many archives. The search became much easier, but Jill really learned a lot doing it the hard way.

MyHeritage Day

All day in-person / Ben Franklin Place

Joint presentation of Ottawa Public Library, Ottawa Branch of Ontario Ancestors and BIFHSGO

Details to follow...